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I’ve always liked the Craig Anderton Tube Sound Fuzz / Way Huge Red Llama. It sounds equally good on bass, without a clean blend, as it does on guitar. But what to do with those four extra, unused inverters in the CD4049?

Well, I recently stumbled on a schematic of the Way Huge Fat Sandwich online. I don’t know if the schematic was correct, had any errors or not. But, what I took away from it was how the CD4049 inverters were stacked in parallel, in two groups of three, within the basic Tube Sound Fuzz configuration.

So, that’s what the Tube Steak is about – no unused inverters in a TSF/Llama fuzz. Well, that and the really cool internally illuminated enclosure that I made for it.

I love the sound of fuzz bass. But as a bass player, it sometimes seems like I’ve been on an endless quest for a great sounding bass fuzz circuit. I’ve tried quite a few different ones, both commercial and DIY, and the one that I keep coming back to is the fuzz channel from the classic Acoustic 360 Bass Preamp.Over the years, I’ve built a number of different versions of the Acoustic 360 Bass Fuzz, always adding some additional tweaks and modifications to the next one to make it sound progressively better to my ears. And so, I’ve always had some version of the Acoustic 360 Bass Fuzz on my bass pedalboard. But, I think I might have finally gotten to the point where I just don’t need to tinker with it anymore. This may be my final revision of the Acoustic 360 Bass Fuzz.Continue reading →

I’ve been tinkering around with this circuit on my breadboard. It’s the Fuzz Unit from Music Projects by R.A. Penfold, 1994.

Two parallel signal paths, a clipping style fuzz and an adjustable gain stage, are both fed into a voltage controlled amplifier (VCA). The fuzz goes to the VCA’s input and the gain stage goes to the VCA’s control pin.

The SKIPPY tremolo is based on the vintage Vox Repeat Percussion. The original VRP is well known for it’s very hard, percussive tremolo sound, or chop. Certain combinations of speed settings and playing style can almost trick your ears into thinking that you are playing through a delay instead of a tremolo. For these reasons, the sound of this tremolo effect is often described as synth-like.

Here is a totally different version of the ParaLooper. It’s a blend pedal that is based on the Maestro Bass Brassmaster, which is why the title of this post is The Brass Blender.

The circuitry inside is exactly the same as the Brassmaster, except that all the parts related to producing the fuzz sound have been left out. What’s left happens to be a very nice, flexible blend pedal.

Now, just for comparison, here’s what an original Brassmaster looks like… Continue reading →

You can find details about this project at Viva Analog. I went a little further by adding an envelope follower (based roughly on the envelope follower in the Lovetone Meatball) and a CV input that allows you to insert an external modulation source (ie. external LFO, sequencer, CV foot pedal, etc…).